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Sunday, April 10, 2016

Fantastical Thoughts and Other Odds and Ends 4-10-16

Did a little bit of everything today; cleaning, sorting, painting and building (well, everything but gaming). During my sorting and cleaning, I came across some Tom Meier elves that I bought some years ago to give me a break from using dwarves against my daughter' Orcs. As it turned out, she started to lose interest in gaming shortly after that, so I only ever painted a single elf. This was a test run for a color scheme.

These are really nice figs, with outstanding fine detail; I didn't do it any justice. He stands about 31mm tall from bottom of foot to top of the white portion of the helmet. At the time, there were three basic styles, with variations in helmet, and armor, and each came as spearmen on foot, mounted, and bowmen. Looking at the site now, it doesn't look like all of these are currently available, though some of the figs are, as well as other wonderful sculpts from Mr. Meier at Thunderbolt Mountain Miniatures . Some of my earliest miniature gaming took place as an off-shoot of D&D with fantasy miniatures. I largely drifted away from fantasy in the 1980s, despite buying a bunch of dwarves for an abandoned consideration of Warhammer by my old gaming group in the 1990s. And even with revisiting it during my daughter's brief interest, I haven't seriously gamed fantasy miniatures in decades. Over the last year, I have been resisting a draw to re-explore fantasy miniatures, and from time to time, have pulled out old plans for an elven village, dwarf fortress, and other models conceived for that Warhammer expedition. A couple of days ago, I ventured to the local hobby shop, which has started carrying Ral Partha and Ironwind figs and army packs, and almost bought a bunch of 25mm orcs and goblins on the spot. Many are figures that I used in those D&D games, all those years ago. Today, when I stumbled onto the tray with the lone painted elf and his brethren, it seemed a fateful coincidence. A draw, slight at first, then more intoxicating as I considered the elves spread across the tray, seeing them as they might appear, with proper paint, defending their home from the forces of evil. I fear that it is only a matter of time before a new quest begins...And in other news, I managed to get paint on a few things, finishing my modified 15mm Jeep TOWs in the process:

I also discovered that the few pots of GW paint that had bought over the years had all solidified. Their place on the painting table quickly taken by the Vallejo bottles that I found on close-out at Hobby Lobby yesterday for 39 cents each. WOO-HOO!My other big success of the day was building a mate to my ZU23/T34 conversion for my African imagi-nation army. I originally started two of them, completing one, and losing the other in my basement flood a couple of years back. In an effort to use up a few pieces-parts sitting on my table, I built a second model for the Mugabian army. Here it is after construction:

Ah the 80s. When I played 1st Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles and had a Goblin army, which I ended up given to my friend Alex Stewart. So far, no desire to get back into Fantasy wagaming, there again I have mechs to and cybertanks, which are pretty fantastical all things considered.